HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

Well, today is my birthday. I am 36. I have now reached an oddly symbolic age since this is the end of a second set of 18 years. I remember not being able to wait until I was 18 years old; now I have lived that age twice!

The nice thing about getting older for me is that I actually LIKE getting older. I am fascinated by it. The world’s changes, my body’s changes, my emotional experiences, my perspectives,… it is fascinating to me to see the patterns of Time.

I have never really feared getting older or even dying. To me, these are two things that are as natural as gravity and green. The only time I have ever had any strange feelings about getting older/dying was just recently, and only briefly. It was after accidentally stumbling across a web cam for Time’s Square here in NYC. I launched the cam and watched the streets. It was around 5am so the streets were fairly quiet, but they were also amazingly alive. I saw the buses pulling through the intersection, sporadic images of people walking down the street, the lights from the giant signs all blazing in the dark grey winter light of such earliness. I don’t know why this is so beautiful to me, but it is. (Oh, the irony of being in awe of the patterns of Time, while being so moved by the patterns of Time’s Square!)

And that’s when I felt it…

For the first time in my entire life I had a feeling similar to claustrophobia sweep over me and I thought: “I am really going to miss this.” I felt jealousy and panic and claustrophobia and a deep, deep, grief. It wasn’t about dying or getting older, but more about feeling this rich and powerful Love for this life and NYC and Earth and the beauty of animals and insects and plants and people. I just thought how perfectly and profoundly fantastic it all is.

I have always felt like an alien in this life, not so much because I am inherently different from a lot of people, but because I have never been able to take this planet for granted. Whether I am in Nature or in Time’s Square, I marvel at it all and I can’t help but think, “What a fucking great idea this was!!” I mean, seriously, if some “higher power” did conceive this, It was brilliant. And if this is all some cosmic accident?? All the more reason for me to be in awe!

Yeah, I know there is pain and suffering, but if you actually look at everything as a whole, pain and suffering are proportionally a very small part of the picture. And then at least half of all of that pain and suffering isn’t because of something “real”, but because of the way we choose to interpret events. 99% of the time, the world we experience can change into something more awesome and beautiful with just a slight change in attitude/perception/interpretation.

Anyway, so I had that slightly suffocating feeling of realizing one day I would not be here, at least in this body in this form I call “troy”, seeing the world in my own unique way. I will miss “me”, too, I am sure. I know it sounds slightly morbid to be talking about these things in this way, but that kind of thinking is another of the things that makes me, “me”, and it helps me to appreciate every single day.

They say that one of the last “lessons” of a Soul is to “learn to love the schoolroom”, which means loving this world and your life in it. I absolutely love this place.

I hope it isn’t my last lesson here.

(more details later about my surprise tiny love birthday party from Nick and Cyprus! what sweetnesses…)